In at the deep end: Comparing different approaches to developing doctoral candidates' teaching skills

Doctoral development is strongly biased towards honing research skills at the expense of systematically developing teaching competency. As a result, aspiring academics feeling unprepared for the pedagogical requirements of early-career academic roles. When early career academics begin their careers without adequate teaching development, they suffer from low teaching self-efficacy and reduce undergraduate and postgraduate students achievement of learning outcomes. In this paper, we argue that quality doctoral education should allow teaching competency to be developed alongside research skills. Systematic, competency based teaching development should begin during PhDcandidacy to enable early career academics to successfully transition into academia and deliver competent learning experiences. In response to this challenge, academics at the Queensland University of Technology developed the Teaching Advantage Program (TAP) tailored exclusively to doctoral candidates. The program was designed using an action research method within a Theory of Cognitive Apprenticeship framework to improve the teaching self-efficacy of doctoral students. Evaluations suggest that advanced doctoral students who attend this voluntary intervention experience significantly improved teaching self-efficacy and report more confidence in their ability to perform in an early-career academic role